BAINBRIDGE ISLAND: First-time film festival gets rave reviews

* The free nine-hour event offered almost 30 short and full-length features to more thanthousand people

A boisterous crowd packed the first Bainbridge film festival to standing room only at times Sunday.

While it may have been the wind and rain that drove the masses to seek shelter in front of a movie screen, it was the high quality of cinema on display that kept them in their seats.

"People may have come to see one thing," said Kathleen Thorne, coordinator of Celluloid Bainbridge, "but they got hooked and stayed."

The festival filled three screens for more than nine hours with just under 30 different shorts and full-length features, including the world premiere of "Row Your Boat," starring Jon Bon Jovi and Bai Ling.

Entrance to the festival was free, and more than a thousand people took advantage of the opportunity to see at least part of the films, all with a Bainbridge Island connection.

Crowd favorites included the short piece "Go, Swing Daddy," written and directed by Seattle filmmaker Dave Hanagan and starring, among others, the Bainbridge dance outfit "The Swingin' Hepcats."

"This was great," Hanagan said. "The chance to have a premiere in front of an audience - to see people's reactions - is the best thing in the world."

He applauded the event's organizers, adding that it was just the sort of encouragement that young filmmakers need. "Something like this brings the community together," Hanagan said. "It shows people in the community that locals are making films, shows them that there is life beyond Hollywood, let's everyone know that we're out there."

Other crowd-pleasers included a duet of vintage 1970s films from island director Scott Taylor: the hippy-era "Frazer's Turn" and the award-winning and scatologically hysterical "Birth of a Salesman."

Also popular was the very short "The Great Lego Chase." Put together by a quartet of island children between 5 and 11 years old, it told the story of a monkey, a stolen spaceship and the plastic astronauts that try to get it back.

"The Lego film was great," said Jamie Walters, who had come over from Seattle especially for the festival. "To see how much can be accomplished by such young kids was amazing."

Walters added that she'd come back again next year, and by the close of the festival, Thorne was looking toward just that possibility.

"This was fun to do," she said. "The first time included a lot of trial and error, and it was great how everything came together so well."

Todd Westbrook is a free-lance writer for The Sun. Reach his editor, Mark Walker, at (360) 792-8568 or at mwalker@thesunlink.com.

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